当我们还在讨论8岁中国小孩的性教育课本是否“尺度太大”时，FT作者在英国发文声援性教育成为4岁儿童必修课

信息时代，网络上各式各样的sext（情色信息）通过电脑、手机持续影响着青少年的健康成长。在这样的背景下，放开并升级性教育愈发重要。

最近一组“《小学生性健康教育读本》图片”在微博上流传开来，一些家长反映其中部分内容“尺度太大”，无法接受。

来源：Weibo.com

这一事件引发了中国网友的热烈讨论。从微博评论和投票来看，多数人对该读本内容表示可以接受，并支持它的推广。

调查显示，多数成年人支持《读本》的使用推广。 来源：Weibo.com

可是最终该事件以《小学生性健康教育读本》暂停使用收场。

在英国，一项有关儿童性教育的政策也引起了该国人民的讨论。这一政策规定，全部学校都应当将性教育课纳入必修课范畴，即便是只有4、5岁的儿童也要接受现代两性关系（modern relationships）教育。

针对这一现象，英国《金融时报》记者Miranda Green撰写文章支持了这一政策。

她用历史数据证明了更开放的性教育政策确实有利于保护儿童健康；在儿童时期接受良好的性教育、建立正确的性观念对于青春期、乃至整个人生都有所裨益；在信息通过手机、网络迅速传播的时代，与时俱进的性教育更是必不可少。

Sex education gets an upgrade for the smartphone generation

智能手机一代：性教育也需要一同“升级”

Teenage self-consciousness about the horrific, daily possibility of being asked to speak in lessons probably peaked for many of us with the paralysing embarrassment of sex education classes.I can still feel the livid flush and thumping heart that accompanied my silent prayer to the biology teacher：Please, oh please, do not ask me to come up and label that diagram.

对于我们大多数而言，在性教育课上可能被点名发言的那种无力的尴尬感，或许是青少年时期最恐怖的感觉了。我至今仍然能够记得我向生物老师默默祈祷“别，别点我的名去上台标注那些图”时，面色一阵铁青、心跳剧烈的感觉。

Another cringe-making moment of my youth was watching Peter Lilley's adaptation of a Gilbert and Sullivan ditty at a Conservative party conference in 1992.Against a backdrop of moral panic about sky-high teenage pregnancy rates, the then social security secretary serenaded the Tory faithful with a version of the executioner's song from The Mikado.Included on his “little list / of benefit offenders” were “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue”.

另一次我年少时感到尴尬的时刻，是1992年保守党会议上，观看Peter Lilley改编自Gilbert和Sullivan的歌剧作品。当时少女怀孕率居高不下，引发了道德恐慌。这位当时的社会保障大臣惘然不顾，为保守党员吟唱了一曲改编自歌剧《日本天皇》中的刽子手唱的歌曲。在这首他的“little list / of benefit offenders”歌中，他唱道：“那些怀孕的年轻女性不过是组建家庭时插了队”。

At the time teenage mothers were a familiar feature of British life—as deplorable, unhealthy and yet inevitable as the national addiction to starchy snacks.Neither the accident-prone crusading ministers of the “back to basics” era, nor an under-the-radar National Health Service action plan managed to make a dent in the figures.

那个时候，年轻妈妈在英国生活中已司空见惯——就像这个国度沉迷于那些裹着淀粉的油炸食品一样可悲、不健康，却又无从避免。无论是“回复本原”时代麻烦频出的改革运动大臣，还是一个低调神秘的国民医疗保健服务行动计划，都无法降低早孕妈妈的数字。

After a week in which a subsequent Tory minister, education secretary Justine Greening, has announced compulsory sex and relationship education for state schools, it is worth revisiting Mr Lilley's shame—along with that he sought to inflict on those girls whose experience of sex had already gone way beyond textbook studies.

在随后的保守党大臣——教育大臣Justine Greening宣布性和两性关系教育成为全部公立学校必修课程一周后，我们有必要回顾一下Peter Lilley的羞耻了：那时候他为那些经历了教科书以外性经历的女孩们，施加了更大负担。

Because seeing teenage pregnancy through a different prism led to a stunning success story.New Labour swept into office in 1997 with an activist attitude to seemingly intractable problems.The new government launched a strategy to cut the rates of under-age motherhood, based on seeing its causes as a mixture of ignorance about sex, confused messages to the young from an adult world obsessed but also embarrassed by the subject, and low expectations.

因为换一个角度对待青少年早孕问题曾经带来成功的故事。新工党在1997年重新执政。面对这个看似棘手的问题，他们采取了积极的态度。新政府出台了一项政策来降低未达婚龄母亲的比率，因为他们看到了，导致这一现象的原因是一系列因素的混合——对性方面的忽视；成人世界传递给年轻人的信息含糊不清，令他们感到好奇却又窘迫，以及较低的期望值。

In trying to sell an interventionist policy to a sceptical audience of “family values” defenders, the bright-eyed Blairites also fell foul of liberal columnists who disapproved of anything that smacked of anti-sex, anti-youth prejudices.

在试图将一条干涉主义政策推广给持怀疑态度的“家庭价值观”捍卫者听众时，热情的布莱尔派也陷入与自由主义专栏作家的纷争中。后者不赞同任何有反性、反年轻人意味的事情。

Yet, derided from both sides, it worked.Last year, the Office for National Statistics said the rate of pregnancy among 15-18 year olds was down to 23 per 1,000—compared with the high 40s in the early 1990s.Labour's target to halve the rate by 2010 had （belatedly） been met.

不过，即便两边不讨好，这项政策依然发挥了作用。去年，英国国家统计办公室表示，15到18岁少女的怀孕率降到了每千人23例——相比而言，1990年代这一数字高达40多人。工党定下的“在2010年前将这一比率降至一半”的目标已经（延期）达成。

Of course, concerns about the sexual menaces facing today's generation of schoolchildren have changed.The unplanned pregnancy threat has given way to online harassment, sexting by smartphone and a sketchy grasp of the principle of consent—plus limited understanding of why readily-available online pornography is a poor guide to human intimacy.

当然，对于当今一代学龄儿童所面临性威胁的担心已然发生了改变。意外怀孕的威胁已经转向了网上骚扰、智能手机收发的情色信息和粗略理解的同意原则——还有，对“为什么容易获得的网上色情内容对亲密关系是一种粗劣的引导”这一问题有限的理解。

But the two challenges are comparable, not least in their diagnosis of the factors that compound the likelihood of young people making bad choices.Ignorance still needs to be tackled （one teacher wrote this week that his class had believed crisp packets were an effective contraceptive）; society is as obsessed and possibly just as confusing in the messages it sends about sex; and young people with low expectations or a hazy sense of their future still find it difficult to resist donating a sexted image to the world via a mistakenly trusted friend.

但是以上两个挑战也具有可比较性，尤其是引起它们的因素，正加重了年轻人做出错误决定的倾向性。孩子对于性方面的无知仍然需要加以修正（一名教师本周写道，他的学生曾经相信薯片是一种有效的避孕药）；全社会都被那些流传的有关性的信息所吸引和迷惑；在交往不慎的损友误导下，没有远见或者对未来只有模糊概念的年轻人发现难以拒绝发送色情信息图片。

Some are still more vulnerable to sexual self-sabotage than others.The psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains the different health choices made by children from different social backgrounds in terms of their sense of time.Do they have the ability to envisage how life might pan out? Less so in deprived communities.The teenage pregnancy statistics are still higher in areas of the country, such as the north-east, where overall educational attainment is low.

和其他人相比，一些青少年在性方面更容易自我堕落。心理学家Philip Zimbardo解释说，来自不同社会背景的孩子，在健康方面做出的不同选择是源于他们时间观念的不同。他们是否设想过如何才能实现人生的成功？在缺乏教育的社群里，“是”的答案往往更少。青少年怀孕统计数在乡村地区依然较高，譬如英国东北地区——在那里，整体教育水平都不高。

Ms Greening's decision is welcome.She has ceded to a campaign for mandatory classes in all state schools.They will go beyond the biology, so pupils can better cope with the real-world challenges of sex, as well as with the increasingly odd ways in which the virtual world impinges on relationships.Unlike her immediate predecessors, but very like the political optimists of the late 1990s, Ms Greening believes intervention is necessary where young people are damaging their own prospects.

Greening的决策值得欢迎。她致力于推进全部英国国立学校实施强制性（性教育）课程。这些课程不局限在生物课里，因此小学生可以更好地应付现实世界里的各种有关性的挑战，以及越来越多的虚拟世界对两性关系各式各样的冲击。和她的前任不同，反而更像1990年代末期那些政策积极派，Greening相信当年轻人正在耽误前程走入歧途时，成人世界的介入必不可少。

Sex ed classes may continue to serve up some embarrassing moments.But Ms Greening has thrown off the shame culture of the early 1990s in favour of a little bit of benign nanny statism.We just have to hope she will refrain from singing about it at the party conference—that really would be excruciating.

性教育课程可能会继续遭遇更多尴尬。但是Greening已经摆脱了1990年代早期的耻感文化，有一点点类似于良性的保姆国家主义。我们只需要希望她可以克制住在党派会议上歌颂它的冲动——那才是真正让人苦恼的。

词汇总结

flush[flʌʃ]

n.激动，洋溢；面红；萌芽；旺盛；奔流

I can still feel the livid flush and thumping heart that accompanied my silent prayer to the biology teacher：Please, oh please, do not ask me to come up and label that diagram.

我至今仍然能够记得我向生物老师默默祈祷“别，别点我的名去上台标注那些图”时，面色一阵铁青、心跳剧烈的感觉。

cringe-making

adj.使非常难堪或厌恶的[英国英语][非正式]

Another cringe-making moment of my youth was watching Peter Lilley's adaptation of a Gilbert and Sullivan ditty at a Conservative party conference in 1992.

另一次我年少时感到尴尬的时刻，是1992年保守党会议上，观看Peter Lilley改编自Gilbert和Sullivan的歌剧作品。

intractable[ɪn'træktəb（ə）l]

adj.棘手的；难治的；倔强的；不听话的

New Labour swept into office in 1997 with an activist attitude to seemingly intractable problems.

新工党在1997年重新执政。面对这个看似棘手的问题，他们采取了积极的态度。

harassment[hə'ræsmənt]

n.骚扰；烦恼

sketchy['sketʃɪ]

adj.写生风格的；概略的

The unplanned pregnancy threat has given way to online harassment, sexting by smartphone and a sketchy grasp of the principle of consent—plus limited understanding of why readily-available online pornography is a poor guide to human intimacy.

意外怀孕的威胁已经转向了网上骚扰、智能手机收发的情色信息和粗略理解的同意原则——还有，对“为什么容易获得的网上色情内容对亲密关系是一种粗劣的引导”这一问题有限的理解。